Johann Wolfgang von Goethe History Quotations

The best government is that which teaches us to govern ourselves.

The best benefit we derive from history is the enthusiasm it excites.

The history of mankind is his character.

We all of us live upon the past, and through the past we are destroyed.

He who cannot draw on three thousand years is living from hand to mouth.

Sin writes histories, goodness is silent. [Ger., Das Uebel macht eine Geschichte und das Gute keine.]

We can stand only a certain amount of unhappiness; anything beyond that annihilates us or passes us by, leaving us apathethetic.

All our knowledge is symbolic.

Writing history is a method of getting rid of the past.

I can promise to be sincere, but I cannot promise to be impartial.

Not all that is presented to us as history has really happened; and what really happened did not actually happen the way it is presented to us; moreover, what really happened is only a small part of all that happened. Everything in history remains uncertain, the largest events as well as the smallest occurrence.

The deepest, the only theme of human history, compared to which all others are of subordinate importance, is the conflict of skepticism with faith.

Sin writes histories, goodness is silent.